Touch panels and, more particularly, touch screens are becoming a popular interface on electronic devices for users to enter commands and data used in the operation of the device. Touch screens can now be found in mobile telephones, particularly cellular telephones having integrated PDA (personal digital assistant) features and other phone operation related features. The touch screens are generally designed to operate and respond to a finger touch, a stylus touch, or finger/stylus movement on the touch screen surface. Touch screens may be used in addition to, in combination with, or in place of physical keys traditionally used in a cellular phone to carry out the phone functions and features.
Touching a specific point on the touch screen display may activate a virtual button, feature, or function found or shown at that location on the touch screen display. Typical phone features which may be operated by touching the touch screen display include entering a telephone number, for example, by touching virtual keys of a virtual keyboard shown on the display, making a call or ending a call, bringing up, adding to or editing and navigating through an address book, and other phone functions such as text messaging, wireless connection to the global computer network, and other phone functions.
Touch screen mobile devices generally provide organization of various applications and the like represented by icons on a touch sensitive display screen using a flat hierarchy of applications. Operating systems for such devices typically allow a user the ability to create a folder. The folder may then be used, for example, to hold a plurality of photos, contacts, or the like. The sequence for creating such a structure is typically that a user goes through a menu-type application of the device and then selects a create folder application. Once the folder has been created, the user may then place items within the folder, a sometimes cumbersome, multi-step process requiring edit mode and menu access.
Commercial pressures to provide far greater user convenience for utilizing the additional functionality of touch sensitive display devices is continuing to drive the need to develop improved usability of these devices.